Oracle: The biggest Linux vendor you've never heard of (TMCnet) [LWN.net]

TMCnet talks with Oracle hacker Wim Coekaerts about Oracle's contributions to Linux. "The Oracle database is a large, complex application that places a lot of demands on the underlying OS. When Oracle wants to experiment, changing how the OS works to optimize database performance, it's easier to do with an open source, community-driven OS than a proprietary one. Hence the number of Linux kernel contributions from Oracle engineers; as a fast research and prototyping tool, Linux can't be beat."

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They will have to launch their own Distro!

Posted Jun 12, 2006 15:07 UTC (Mon) by tristangrimaux (guest, #26831) [Link] (4 responses)

Aren't they planning something like that? 9000 Developers?????? That's a lot of people!!

And yes, we have "the popular perception of Oracle as being something of a bully in the open source world".

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Donde Ser Geek No Duele

Cute, cuddly Oracle, yeah.

Posted Jun 12, 2006 16:25 UTC (Mon) by kirkengaard (guest, #15022) [Link] (2 responses)

The problem isn't that they are unfriendly WRT adoption of Linux; the problem is that they have adopted it for its technological superiority and are stuck with its freedoms. We think they're unfriendly when they buy up free software projects as though it were an issue of obtaining control over a competitor.

There's a difference between being a big consumer with plans for pushing Linux across an entire product line, and behaving like a peer in the community. How many ibm.com addresses do you see on linux-kernel, for example? How many oracle.com? Maybe the disparity is part of the corporate culture, but isn't that what we're talking about? Why don't we hear from those 9,000 developers? If I take Coekaerts comment at face value, it's because they are merely using Linux to build their products. They are Oracle developers working on Linux systems developing Oracle products. This doesn't mean they're competent to assemble a distribution. Of course, it doesn't mean they're not, either.

Cute, cuddly Oracle, yeah.

Posted Jun 12, 2006 18:20 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (1 responses)

The 9000 figure is developers who use Linux, not developers of Linux. I wouldn't expect Oracle to quit doing database development and work exclusively on other stuff. And the stated purpose of Free Software is to let people like those 9000 use a system that meets their needs. The aren't stuck with the freedoms, they're being the intended beneficiary of those freedoms.

Oracle does do a certain amount of kernel development, also. I see 148 ibm.com (actually, *.ibm.com; they don't do @ibm.com, evidently), and 4 oracle.com addresses. But 2 of those are subsystem maintainers, one is Zack Brown, and the fourth is Wim Coekaerts; also, their main contribution, ocfs2, has its own mailing list that they host. IBM had better be more visible, since they manufacture two computer architectures (s390 and PPC), and a bunch of devices that need drivers.

Of course, we can't tell how they view buying open-source database companies. Everybody said at the time that it like they were obtaining control over a competitor, but MySQL just gave Innobase a "partner of the year" award, so it looks like Oracle isn't using their ownership of Innobase to cause problems for MySQL. We don't think it makes business sense for Oracle to make improvements that also benefit MySQL, but that's not necessarily true; Oracle seems to have dedicated customers that they charge an arm and a leg for intangible benefits, and those aren't doing database comparisons with MySQL anyway, so maybe they can afford to just make the state of the art better with each version.

Cute, cuddly Oracle, yeah.

Posted Jun 14, 2006 1:57 UTC (Wed) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]

> MySQL just gave Innobase a "partner of the year" award

Feeding the lion. Carefully :-)

They will have to launch their own Distro!

Posted Jun 13, 2006 16:52 UTC (Tue) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

> And yes, we have "the popular perception of Oracle as being something of a bully in the open source world".

Not really a bully in the open source world. Though they have arguably been a bit of a bully to a competitor, and vendor of proprietary licenses, called MySQL AB.

Disappointingly, after pruchasing Innobase, they did extend MySQL AB's critically needed proprietary license on the otherwise open source InnoDB.

Nice of them to do that for MySQL AB, but not quite so nice for OSS.

Hopefully, this will be the last time.

(Yes, there are other valid ways of looking at all this, but I wanted to present this one.)

Oracle: Thanks for the freedom, now put these manacles on

Posted Jun 13, 2006 0:46 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

There are many large, complex applications that place a lot of demands on the underlying database system. When application developers want to experiment, changing how the database system works to optimise it for a task, or simply alter existing features, it's easier to do with a free software, community-driven database system than a proprietary one.

The Oracle database is a large, complex, non-free application that locks the user into a single vendor. While they enjoy the freedom of a customisable, resellable operating system, they extend no such freedom to their own customers.

Oracle can't possibly be so blind as to see that the freedom they enjoy is freedom their own customers would prefer. If Oracle don't deliver, many of their customers will go elsewhere.